


snacks

by ruruka



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: actually a season 0 fic really but theres no tag lolz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22103995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruruka/pseuds/ruruka
Relationships: Jounouchi Katsuya | Joey Wheeler & Mutou Yuugi, Jounouchi Katsuya | Joey Wheeler & Yami Yuugi
Comments: 4
Kudos: 54





	snacks

It was pretzels in July, switched for salt and vinegar chips late into August, and September had brought a full turn around to gummy candies being his obsession of choice. October had been when the new Kit-Kat flavor swept Japan, artificial blueberry cheesecake his friends would gag at the sight of a sixth consecutive fun size bar unwrapping in his hands. Spurned by them, certainly, though he’d always notice the bowl of cheesecake chocolates lingering on the Mutous’ counter well past Halloween. But he doesn’t care to search for those anymore, tastes matured now in January, longing for more, _yearning._

“Fuckin’ nice, Cosmic Brownies.”

Cardboard flexes around the shove of his hand inside the box, retracting with a trio of snack cakes to stuff into a windbreaker pocket. He’s popping one from its plastic as he turns round from the cabinets again, and he’s been in two street gangs and broken enough bones to punch every hole in his card, but, rightfully, he jumps _just_ a bit at the five feet of middle aged woman standing behind him. 

“Not that mouth in my kitchen again, Jounouchi,” Mutou-san scolds, closing the hanging cabinet behind his head in a short check inside the box freshly raided. “Am I going to have to go grocery shopping again already?”

Jounouchi, stuck still on whether his _mouth_ has been censured for its cursing or its chewing, bows forward regardless in a clap of the palms. “Sorry, Mom.” Straightened, he’s an inch thin to slip past her, socks on tile, shouting through a mouthful of chocolate, “If you do, make sure you get some more of them brownies. I might just be hooked!”

“I ought to make you my errand boy for how much you eat!” calls after the swing of the door into the front room. Jounouchi snickers to himself, perhaps, at the lightheart of the bickering that seems to slam him every time his best friend’s mother catches him rummaging in her cupboards. A crumpling wrapper trades for a second brownie from the righthand pocket.

“How’s it coming?” Knees bend to place him on the couch beside the other, the same warm spot he’d kept before leaving on a self proclaimed snack break. Jounouchi bites the head off a brownie like a hawk ravaging a rat.

Across the coffee table, papers mingle, concealing the tabletop from all daylight with their mass of mess strewn all along it. A statistics sheet here. Thumbnail sketch there. In its midst, that thunder zone, Yuugi pores over a printed page of research as if staring at it another ten minutes will in some life absorb its information. 

Jounouchi notes the lack of response, though he supposes if he were that deep into a project due in seventeen hours he might be a bit sick to his guts, too. 

He remembers in blinks that, well, he somewhat sort of one hundred percent is in the same position as Yuugi’s tense form beside him, and just maybe should work the same. He groans low enough in his throat to swallow it. Though, given the opportunity, he’d rumble it right off in Anzu’s face for choosing to work alone on her own project, yapping on about how she’d sooner die than be stuck again doing it all and having to slap _Jounouchi Katsuya_ on it afterward; or, too, he’d like to roar out his grievances for Honda’s betrayal to go on and partner with Miho, even after he’d been surely loud enough in telling him she won’t like him just ‘cause he does the entire biology project for her. More than anything he’d like to slap some stupid sense into the guy, but he’s too busied now in wishing he were here, or Anzu, or even Bakura, for shit’s sake, another who’d declined the invitation into their group on account of, oh, they probably wouldn’t want to do the same topic as he had in mind (and upon coaxing it out of him that he’d like to research into skin grafts for the reanimated undead, Jounouchi’s almost glad it’s ended up just he and Yuugi on their own project about amphibian ecosystems). 

“Sooo, uhh...whatcha want me to do here?” He leans forward, scanning papers over the other’s shoulder. “I could draw some chameleons or something, y’know, for the poster board. Would look pretty cool.”

“Chameleons are reptiles, Jou,” Yuugi says, moans a miserable length, sitting back away from the table to lean into the couch cushions. Both hands come to massage his face. Jounouchi watches onward, chewing thoughtful bites of chocolate. 

They might’ve been better off starting this three weeks ago when it was first assigned. Or at least yesterday, but, he thinks the extra round of _Metroid_ was a more pressing matter. 

“Hey, Yuugi, don’t worry, man.” He pats the thigh poised stiffly beside him. “Take a break, I’ll work on it for a while. This ain’t so hard. Yuugi?”

The line of his vision sails from the hopelessness of the table to that of his dear one, Yuugi reappearing from behind his hands to stare him bold back. For a half moment, he glances down to the hand on his thigh, shuffles a length away to be rid of it. And that’s how Jounouchi knows. 

“Ah, sorry, Other Yuugi.” He shifts all his limbs to his own space, eyeing the other man’s demeanor of leant forth, strong, keen. 

The Other Yuugi glances across the papers on the table, humming shortly to the room. “Homework…”

“Yeah,” Jounouchi nods. He points to the printed Wikipedia article on salamander habitats. “Me and Yuugi got a big project due tomorrow. Guess he got a little overwhelmed.”

Expression steeled, The Other Yuugi does not move his focus from the table. He folds his hands beneath his chin, either elbow to either knee. A stance of power Jounouchi pinpoints as another telltale sign of change. Yuugi sits politely, twiddles the fingers and smiles at his mother. The Other Yuugi doesn’t care to make nice, even if he’s an alright type of guy. Sometimes he flicks a lighter and Yuugi wakes up coughing. 

The Other Yuugi doesn’t talk to Jounouchi as much as Jounouchi talks to him, but he doesn’t mind it so much. Even if they’ve known each other a year or two or more, they aren’t so close as with Yuugi himself. It’s always a learning curve for him, regardless of all the little ticks he’s picked up on to know when Yuugi’s gone for the moment. He’d never knowingly put a hand on The Other Yuugi’s thigh. That’s just plain intimate. 

“I suppose we’d better finish this…” mumbles The Other Yuugi, looking the papers over as if they were all puzzle pieces with a pattern in mind. Vaguely, Jounouchi nods, settling upon settling and not worrying over how awkward the following however many hours might be. But he wouldn’t like it to be. No, in fact, it won’t, not with the expertise of Jounouchi Katsuya on the case. 

His pocket empties its weight another time. “Hey, Other Yuugi… Want a brownie?”

The snack waves forward as some sort of preservative packed peace offering. The Other Yuugi turns his head a millimeter a moment, lethal, almost, in that thinned gaze. 

“...Eat the candies off first,” he says, and faces back to the task ahead.

“Huh? Hey,” bucks with a laugh. “Yuugi always does that, eats the candies off first, and then eats the brownie. You guys sure are funny.”

Though he relays his distance, a finger plucks gently the first candy topping to crunch solo within his teeth. The next follows. “So, I’m thinkin’,” comes just before he eats the third, “Yuugi said this was a lousy idea, but I want your opinion. What about cutting the poster in the shape of a lizard, or whatever the fuck, that way we get creativity points _and_ we have less space for real information.”

Palm on a leg, he contemplates with a finger tapping. 

“Not bad,” says that voice, velvet and smoke overtop Yuugi’s natural flutey lilt. “We could find real lizards, and use their skin on the board, as well.”

“...Eh, probably too smelly. At least you’re flexing those artistic muscles, though.” Fond, idle, Jounouchi breaks the candyless brownie into two halves, pinching one to the side. “Here.”

Hesitation. That always seems to be The Other Yuugi’s color, yet all the same does he move with arbitrary whim in the face of a challenge. Jounouchi wonders what that means of their relationship, but The Other Yuugi reaches out his dainty fingers and takes the offering, dressed up in Yuugi’s same white short sleeve button up, Yuugi’s same leather and Yuugi’s same dip dyed high school hair. To other eyes, Jounouchi can imagine mistaking him for Yuugi himself, but to his own, it’s perhaps akin to twins he’s known for long enough to think they look hardly related at all. Yuugi likes GameBoy, The Other Yuugi likes games with naughty, naughty boys.

(Jounouchi wonders if he ought to start eating the candies off his brownies first, too).


End file.
